On Friday, 30 October 2020, the Policy and Advocacy team from CarbonEthics held a virtual workshop called Warung Kopi Karbon Biru. Nine Indonesian and international non-profit organisations (NGOs) attended the workshop. These NGOs are engaged in the environmental sector and have various projects in blue carbon conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and development of coastal communities in Indonesia.
CarbonEthics believes in the super power of collaboration that should be raised between NGOs and other stakeholders to enhance blue carbon ecosystem conservation. We acknowledge that blue carbon ecosystems have a greater ability to store carbon, more than terrestrial forests. Unfortunately, in Indonesia, there is no specific policy regulating blue carbon, including mangrove forests that experience massive deforestation.
By gathering many NGOs, we hope to produce various collaborations that can conserve blue carbon ecosystems, protect coastal areas and collectively advocate the creation of the policy to the government.
In the discussion, we found three big themes or concerns from the NGOs. The first theme was everything related to restoration, protection and science. World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia, Kehati, Terangi and Bimo also Ika from CarbonEthics are the contributors of this group. They expressed the importance of creating a blue carbon roadmap with evidence-based research to support the protection and conservation of blue carbon. They want to hold another Warung Kopi Karbon Biru that involves Coordinating Ministry for Maritime & Investment Affairs (Kemenko Marves) to create a map and database of the blue carbon ecosystem in Indonesia, which will become the basis of research for making a policy roadmap.
The second theme was anything related to community resilience and sustainable economy. This group was attended by the Biru Forest Foundation, Terangi, Rare, Conservation International Indonesia and Byanmara from CarbonEthics as contributors. They raised the issue of the lack of choice of livelihood and the lack of ways to increase the value of mangrove. Meanwhile, there is a large gap in economic valuation and financial value of local communities. Also, there are approaches from external parties, including the government, which weaken community customs. Therefore, they want to build coastal community resilience by, among other things, exploring local potential, evaluating mangrove economies, and developing the communities' capacities to create a sustainable livelihood, development and carry out sustainable economic activities, such as adopting sustainable fisheries systems.
The last theme was about blue carbon regulation and markets discussed by Conservation International Asia Pacific, Wetlands International Indonesia and Robi from CarbonEthics. They were mainly exploring Indonesia's readiness in using mangrove for carbon credits. They discussed the complicated licensing rules and systems, Forest Reference Emission Levels (FREL) development, Results-based payments (RBP) scenario and the comparison of Emission Reduction Credits (ERC) and standard assets. They want to encourage FREL to become a blue carbon regulatory reform action by encouraging transparency of processes and data, doing collaborative monitoring and adding more values that will catch the interest of stakeholders. They also want to include blue carbon to Indonesia's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) by offering the national potential numbers to Bappenas and KLHK. Finally, they want to create a blue carbon financial scheme in coordination with BPDLH while mapping out the concerns experienced by other blue carbon stakeholders by adopting the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) approach and the sustainable production landscape - Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) model.
Three and a half hours was not enough for us to conduct this fruitful discussion, on the positive side, the attendees are encouraged to have more specific discussions to create actionable, collaborative action plans soon. Therefore, we hope to be able to carry out more Warung Kopi Karbon Biru and co-host it with other NGOs and bring up one specific theme in every workshop to determine the next collaborative action.
Thank you to the fellow NGOs who have been willing to work together with us on the First Warung Kopi. Hopefully, there will be many real collaborative actions in the future that will involve more NGOs, community groups, governments and think tanks to conserve the blue carbon ecosystem, save the earth and the lives in it.